Earth

Digital Pollution: How Dangerous It is to Our Environment?

April 7, 2021 /

Did you know that our digital technologies are one of the biggest causes of CO2 pollution in the world? Yes, our activity in Internet such as watching on-demand videos, sending and receiving emails, uploading photos into the cloud and using apps or scrolling on our social media is emits carbon dioxide. 

For your information, the digital enquiry emitted approximately 7G of C02. It is a small amount that can easily absorbed by trees. Yes, until we realize that there are 35 million people are accessing Google every day! 

Now the 7G of CO2 is becoming big problems to all of us.  

Here are the activities we do on our gadget every day emits carbon dioxide: 

  • 1 email emits 10g of CO2eq; 
  • Every day, an average of 294 billion emails are sent; 
  • The average weight of web pages increased by 115 between 1995 and 2015; 
  • Watching a 30min show leads to emissions of 1.6kg of CO2eq; 
  • Online video streaming produced 30 million tons of CO2 emissions (equivalent to a country like Spain). 

Furthermore, the energy and resources are necessary build hardware for our gadgets, such as mobile phone are at least presenting 40 metals and building a laptop require 240kg of fossil fuel, 22kg of chemicals, and 1,5 litres of water. 

It is shocking to know that the little things we do every day to work or to get entertain can emits carbon dioxide and pollute our environment. To reduce the amount of carbon dioxide, there are little things you can do 

  • Empty your mailbox 
  • Try to not accumulate emails, folders, photos in a cloud 
  • Install a spam filter 
  • Unsubscribe newsletters that you never open 
  • Choose repair or buy refurbished gadgets 
  • Watch TV rather than streaming 
  • Opt for wi-fi rather than 4G or 5G 

Digital pollution is a new thing, and many people are not recognizing about how dangerous digital pollution to our environment. Internet is beneficial to our life, it can help us to finding data, researching, collecting data and to entertaining. Limiting the uses of internet every day can reduce the CO2 emissions.